More than $22,500 in awards will be presented, and the top applicant will be invited to attend the conference and accept the award in person. Eligible applicants are children or dependents (including spouses) of a supply chain department employee whose company's FSA membership dues are current.

The Kraft Heinz Company, the fifth largest food and beverage company in the world, has selected FourKites, the leading supply chain visibility and predictive analytics platform with a network of more than four million GPS-connected assets, to provide real-time freight tracking and monitoring across its supply chain. As a company committed to providing high quality, great taste and nutrition for all eating occasions, whether at home, in restaurants or on the go, Kraft Heinz needed a global enterprise-grade visibility and temperature monitoring platform that could deliver predictive insights, and be implemented quickly, leveraging the industry's largest network of technology partners.

General Mills' new customer service and distribution center within RidgePort Logistics Center is now open in Wilmington, 60 miles south of Chicago. Gov. Bruce Rauner joined leadership from Elion Partners and General Mills to celebrate the opening. The 1.5M SF facility is strategically near the I-55 and I-80 corridors, as well as BNSF and Union Pacific rail lines. The massive Ridgeport Logistics Center encompasses more than 30M SF of potential space, 5.4M SF of developed space and 810K SF under construction.

63rd Annual Food Shippers of America Conference Sponsors for 2018 include:

Choptank Transport, a third-party logistics provider, headquartered in Preston, Maryland, announced the launch of a new brand strategy and logo design to align with its recent growth and technology-driven logistics services. "Choptank has grown over the years and we are not the same company we were when we first opened our doors. We need to let the industry know who we are today – rated as a top 3PL, with sophisticated logistics technology, real-time tracking capabilities and highly trained sales and logistics professionals," said Geoff Turner, president and CEO at Choptank. "Our new logo and brand strategy directly reflect our company’s evolution and fast adoption of leading edge technologies."

Amazon.com Inc.’s price cuts at Whole Foods, a key part of its strategy for the upscale grocer, are rocking its supermarket rivals. Shares of Kroger Co. and Sprouts Farmers Market Inc. fell on Wednesday after Amazon announced that it was lowering prices on more grocery items and holiday staples. The deals include deeper discounts on antibiotic-free turkeys as Thanksgiving approaches. Whole Foods also signaled that markdowns will get more aggressive as it adopts Amazon’s Prime subscription platform. The popularity of Prime threatens to give the grocer a weapon it can wield against other chains, which already have seen their shares pummeled this year.

Ken Stern & Associates Inc. acquired a new stake in Tyson Foods, Inc. (NYSE:TSN) in the third quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The institutional investor acquired 3,730 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $260,000.

Food Shippers of America’s 63rd Annual Conference will be held March 11-13th, 2018 at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge in Phoenix AZ. If you have attended an FSA conference in the last three years, you will receive an email invitation that will include your own unique voucher number. This number will be needed when you access the link within the email invitation to complete your conference registration.

Food Shippers of America Agenda 2018 as of 11/16/17.

In 2016, the world shipped more than USD 220 billion meats and seafood. Naturally, ensuring the quality and safety of these foods is a major concern for everyone in the supply chain, from the food suppliers to consumers to government agencies. In particular, monitoring the vast amounts of food can easily become a logistical nightmare. Currently, time-temperature indicators (TTIs) have been in the market for monitoring food transportation. TTIs can indicate if the food was exposed to elevated temperatures during transportation which could signify the presence of bacterial fermentation. TTIs are a great first step, but they are far from ideal. The method monitors a time duration outside of a specified temperature rather than the actual presence of food spoilage. This is especially relevant because there have been reports where food fermentation was detected even when stored at 0 °C.

The ELD mandate will help to standardize Hours of Service (HOS). Paper logs can be manipulated easily, with some drivers running multiple books or delaying start times, to drive more hours than legally allowed. This would help a driver deliver loads more quickly and move more loads over a given timeframe. There will be many drivers who have been moving shipments with accelerated transit who will now be forced to operate according to legal hours. This will impact the frequency with which a truck is available for use and change how long it takes some shipments to deliver. A capacity tightening is almost certain. Just how much capacity will tighten is yet to be known. Industry sources predict that shippers can expect a 4-7% impact on capacity and a 5-15% increase in rates because of electronic logbooks. DAT expands, saying that these increases will be greatest on 450- to 600-mile lanes. NOTE: Roadside enforcement will begin December 18, 2017. There will be documentation of violations and citations will be issued to those operating without a compliant ELD. There is a hard "effective date" of April 1, 2018. Inspectors will place a driver out of service (10 hours) if their vehicle is not equipped with the required device. This time window was granted to give shippers and truckers time to adjust to the rule with "minimal disruption to the delivery of goods."

Nearly five times the size and packed with endless cereal possibilities, Kellogg's® NYC Café an opportunity to eat, chill and create! BATTLE CREEK, Mich., Nov. 9, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Building on their first year of success in Times Square, Kellogg's® NYC Café will open the doors of its immersive new brick-and-mortar cereal café and experience on December 7th in NYC's Union Square neighborhood. The second iteration of the cereal café, located at 31 E 17th St., will be more than just a place to eat. It'll be a destination for foodies and people to chill, create and explore the endless possibilities of cereal all in one place, whether it be for breakfast, lunch or a snack later in the day. The new location will include several new elements (and some more exciting surprises and announcements to come):

NEW BEDFORD, Mass., Sid Wainer & Son®, the leading distributor and curator of New England's finest specialty foods, has opened its highly anticipated state-of-the-art multi-million dollar warehousing and distribution facility in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Sid Wainer & Son®'s total cooler space now stands at over 100,000 sq. feet with the opening of the new facility. The new 56,000 sq. feet of cooler space holds three separate temperature zones and a 200 ft. shipping and receiving dock that was engineered around advanced safety systems and processes to support the major volume Sid Wainer & Son® experiences. Each week over two million pounds of specialty food leaves the new facility destined for chefs and restaurants across New England and the world.

Ah, the sleep-inducing, football-watching, turkey-obsessed, Thanksgiving meal. For many around the country the turkey is the unfortunate star of our dinner tables every November. In 1911, a Vest Pocket Essay published in the San Francisco Call noted, "The turkey is the national bird of thankfulness," and "the patriotic turkey dies for his country on Thanksgiving day," shares NPR. Not sure the turkeys are aware of their patriotism or they’d agree to make this sacrifice, but we have some good news for them—they don’t rank as the most popular Thanksgiving food in any state. (Hosting this year? Downloading our free Thanksgiving Planner with recipes, a timeline, jokes and more, is an absolute must.)